Determine Whether the Applications Are Windows 7 Compliant

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Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

In this step, you determine whether the applications in your inventory are Windows 7 compliant. For new applications that are Windows 7 compliant, the main process of the application must run as a standard user. When users attempt to start an application that requires administrative privileges, Windows 7 informs them that they are trying to start an administrative application and that they need to provide approval. For more information about the Windows Logo program, see Windows Logo Program (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=146648).

During the deployment of Windows 7, IT departments may find that their existing line-of-business (LOB) applications no longer function properly. This problem is most likely due to application incompatibility with the enhancements incorporated in Windows 7.

You may investigate the behavior of applications that are used in your environment by using tools that monitor file and registry activity. There are several free tools available to help you analyze the behavior of the application, which include:

  • Standard User Analyzer

  • LUA Buglight

  • Process Monitor

Standard User Analyzer

Testing for application compatibility with User Account Control (UAC) can be performed by installing the Standard User Analyzer. The Standard User Analyzer is part of the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=23302).

When using the Standard User Analyzer, you can either start your application as a standard user or start your application elevated as an administrator:

  • Start your application as a standard user. When you start an application as a standard user, the Standard User Analyzer is running in diagnosis mode. The application fails at the first error it encounters, and the Standard User Analyzer reports why it failed.

  • Start your application elevated as an administrator. When you start an application as an administrator, the Standard User Analyzer is running in prediction mode. The application runs and, if necessary, performs a few tasks to allow the Standard User Analyzer to predict and give an overview of the errors the application might encounter if it is run as a standard user.

For information about downloading and installing the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 and using the Standard User Analyzer, see Identify Applications That Do Not Run Correctly in Windows 7 in the deployment section of this guide.

LUA Buglight

LUA Buglight runs the target application as a standard user. When an operation fails because of a permissions issue, the operation is retried with full administrative access tokens before returning control back to the application. The details of these operations are written to a log file, which is then processed and displayed. LUA Buglight can be run directly and does not require installation of any software. To download LUA Buglight, see LUA BugLight 2.0 – Second Preview (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=137174).

Process Monitor

Process Monitor records file and registry activity on the computer. You can use Process Monitor to look for "Access denied" errors or other errors that may indicate that the application is not functioning correctly running as a standard user. To download the Process Monitor, see the Windows Sysinternals Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=137175).